Fantasy Land

So I've been a terrible blogger of late. I blame essays, midterms, a minor concussion (I'm fine, thanks), laziness and weekend adventures, But anyway, here's my post on my trip to Cappadocia about a month ago (ha sorry about that).

Let's start with pronunciation. Because English is silly and tends to arbitrarily make and break its own rules, the second 'c' tends to cause some problems and confusion. Turkish, on the other hand, is much more straightforward when it comes to writing, and gives a less ambiguous pronunciation guide: Kapadokya. Sound it out, and you've nailed it.

The next thing to note is that Cappadocia is a region of Turkey, not a particular city or town. Where exactly the limits of the region lie, I'm not sure, but it's made up of a variety of towns and villages - with the city of Nevşehir as the biggest in the area - and, importantly, the cliffs and valleys and volcanoes in between them. During the trip, we hopped around between a bunch of different locations, The map found here is one of the better ones, I think, for getting a realistic sense of the area, if you care about such things. Cappadocia (Nevşehir specifically) is about 6 hours by car southeast of Ankara.

The trip was organized by the International Students Network, which had its ups and downs. On one hand, it was pretty stress-free in that I had no responsibility for figuring out travel logistics, but the trade-off of course was that the trip was quite prescriptive. This was especially frustrating when we seemed to be frequently waiting around between destinations. I felt like a lot of time was wasted which I could have spent walking around and exploring more.

We took an overnight bus from campus which was quite miserable because despite my personal ability to sleep basically anywhere, it was uncomfortable and not very restful. It also took much longer than it should have, since we stopped frequently and for extended periods of time.

When we finally got to Cappadocia, it was about 9 in the morning, and we jumped right into things. 

We started in a small village just outside of Nevşehir. The Student Network had set up a visit to a local elementary school with us. We went into classrooms (of older students) and introduced ourselves, telling them where we were from across the world. The students, in turn, practised asking us questions in English, and we practiced our Turkish with them. The other Turkish students from METU helped us translate. Then we all went outside, and were joined by the younger students. We played sports, danced or again practised speaking the other’s languages. Overall, I thought it was quite fun. I like kids, and they were very cute, fun and welcoming. We were all exhausted, and I’m not sure if we really did anything to enrich the lives of the Turkish elementary students, but I enjoyed it. Some kids even asked for our “autographs” which I found adorable.

The school we visited

Next, we headed to the town of Uçhisar, most famous for the Uçhisar Castle. My understanding is that it isn't actually a castle, per se, but just a cave complex built into a strange rock outcrop, making it just look like a castle. Cave dwellings are one of the features that make Cappadocia so famous - they are everywhere here. And if you read on to the end of this post, you'll see them make a lot of appearances. Anyway, the Uçhisar Castle is very cool, because it's one of the most iconic places in the region - you can see it from a great distance, and you can also climb to the top, through the caves, to get a fantastic view of the Cappadocia landscape. That's precisely what we did.

Uçhisar Castle

Halfway up Uçhisar Castle, where you can better see pigeon holes and caves.

The stunning geography and geology of Cappadocia, which is cool in itself, but also makes all of the caves and (foreshadowing) underground cities of the region possible is largely thanks to a volcano, Mount Erciyes, which is now extinct. Erciyes' spewing left a lot of very soft rock, which has eroded over centuries to create some unique and fascinating structures, and is also very easy to carve, hence all of the cave-dwellings.

Looking out on the landscape of Cappadocia from the top of Uçhisar Castle. In the distance, you can see Mt Erciyes, the extinct volcano which is responsible for all of the cool geology. 

Dangling my feet off of Uçhisar Castle.

After Uçhisar, we went for lunch along the edge of the nearby Pigeon Valley. Pigeon Valley, unsurprisingly, is named after pigeons, who make nests in the soft stone, speckling the surface of the cliffs with little holes. One of the strange (by Western standards) but also cool things about the Valley and, I would later find, Cappadocia in general, is that there aren't very many restrictions on what you can do. There are unmarked paths all through this valley, for example, which seem to just be from people exploring. After our lunch, for example, we were able to just wander down into the valley, and scramble over rock outcrops. It was pretty cool. Like with Uçhisar Castle, there are so many dwellings carved into the rock as well. They looked very neat, but also completely inaccessible, to be honest. I'm not sure if erosion has made their access much more difficult, or if it just looks that way from a distance. We couldn't actually get close to the caves here, they all seemed to be on the opposite cliffs from where we were.

Pigeon Valley

Looking down pigeon valley, back towards Uçhisar Castle.

Caves and ancient homes in Pigeon Valley

More ancient architecture built into the walls of Pigeon Valley

In the afternoon, we headed to the town of Göreme and its so-called Open-Air Museum, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. For good reason. This place is essentially an old religious complex of the early Christians; monks and nuns lived here, sustaining themselves on a bit of agriculture in the valley below. They made countless churches into the huge rock cliffs, and painted the ceilings with beautiful murals. It was interesting to see the evolution in the art - some of the churches had very simple crosses in only red paint. Others, were incredibly complex, with detailed figures and entire stories told on the ceiling. You can't take pictures inside the church caves here, so you'll have to trust me, but if you keep reading you'll see similar pictures from another cave church later in the trip.

This was a monastery. Built into a mountain. So cool. At the 

Göreme Open-Air Museum.

Göreme Open-Air Museum

The monks' farmland in the valley at the Göreme Open-Air Museum

One of many churches at the Göreme Open-Air Museum. If you look closely you can see the cross above the door.

More incredible geology, Göreme Open-Air Museum.

Another (multi-level) church in the Göreme Open-Air Museum, built right into the rock.

Churches, churches, churches! So cool. Note the carvings directly into the stone, as well as the red paint, which is similar to the painting used inside the caves, too.

Each church was unique, and I tried to see as many as possible (seriously, there were probably dozens). The history of early Christians in this area is truly fascinating - the monastery is Byzantine-era, and most of the churches were carved and painted in the 12th or 13th century. That they are still quite preserved today is amazing.

In the evening, we went to a hamam, or Turkish Bath. Unfortunately, we were a huge group, and the hamam put accommodating us above giving a truly genuine experience. The first sign of this was that they accommodated both men and women at the same time, in the same rooms - this is highly unusual in Turkey.

There were saunas and hot tubs, and everybody got a face mask. But the real experience was in the massage and the scrub down. The scrub down involved a man with a scratchy cloth scrubbing my arms, legs, chest, and back, with the intent of getting off ALL dead skin. He did not hold back, and it was intense but felt good by the end. Next, a massage. Using bubbles and unforgiving hands, there was a full back, arm and leg massage, which was, I think, the most amazing massage of my life. But really it just made me want to go to a REAL hamam and get an even more genuine experience!

"Hamam", meaning Turkish bath. Apparently it wasn't the most genuine hamam experience, but still cool.

The next morning, we headed to a pottery shop, where there was a brief demonstration of how they make the pottery, and we were served the delicious local specialty of apple tea, and then we were escorted into the galleries. I wasn't interested in buying anything, but I had to admit it can be pretty beautiful art.

The pottery shop, where there was "special price just for you", of course.

Next up: one of my favourite parts of the trip, the visit to Love Valley. Love Valley has some of the most unique and interesting geological formations in Cappadocia, especially the tall towers, called "Fairy Chimneys", which are completely naturally formed from erosion of the soft volcanic rock. Love Valley was great because we were basically just allowed to roam freely around the whole valley, at our own pace, and every time I turned my head, it was another new fascinating scene to look at! I'm not going to tell you why it's called Love Valley - if you look at the next pictures and use your imagination, you should be able to get there on your own. Hint: it's NOT because this would be a romantic place to bring your significant other.

Cappadocia landscapes

Love Valley. It was a beautiful day.

"Fairy chimneys" in Love Valley.

Fairy Chimneys, Love Valley.

Love Valley

Ok, have you guessed why it's called Love Valley yet?

Me and my American friend Nurisha doing the whole selfie thing in Love Valley.

These Fairy Chimney-things are massive. Remember, this is all made my volcanoes and rain and time!

After Love Valley, we visited a local winery. To be honest, I had not very much been enjoying Turkish wine up to this point. To be fair, I was buying cheap stuff, but compared to cheap Canadian wines Turkish wines were no good. Finally, this trend changed in Cappadocia, at the Turasan Winery, which is one of the most famous brands of the region. The climate in this area is perfect for growing wine grapes, and the wine was quite good. I picked up a bottle to bring back to Ankara.

Speaking of the weather, it was positively HOT at this point. I would guess it to be in the mid-20s Celsius, and sunny. Remember, this was the first week in March, and I know for a fact it was brutally cold back in Canada. Even Ankara hadn't been that nice, and in fact hasn't really been since!

The Turasan winery.

In the hot afternoon sun, we visited another of my favourite Cappadocia spots: Imagination Valley. It's named as such because everyone sees various animals and shapes and characters in the rocks (such as the famous camel in the photo below), not unlike when you look up at clouds and use your imagination to see different things. Again, we were basically free to just explore and climb as we wished around the rocks, which was fantastic. I ran ahead to try to get photos without anyone else in them - a true privilege of being here in off-season. Seriously, there were maybe 6 other tourists here, and I KNOW that this place is just crawling with them in the summer.

Imagination Valley

Can you see the camel? You are no longer allowed to climb on it. Imagination Valley.

Imagination Valley

Just beautiful. Imagination Valley.

The cliffs of Imagination Valley.

The next day we visited the underground city of Kaymaklı. Cappadocia has numerous underground cities (and in fact a new one - perhaps the largest underground city in the world - was just discovered). Kaymaklı is fascinating enough though - it is a full blown 8-storey city, all underground (though the bottom 4 stories have since collapsed). Locals in the area lived underground for centuries in order to hide from the numerous invaders who came to and conquered the region - Romans, Byzantines, Mongolian Hordes, Seljuks, Arabs, Ottomans - to name a few. Taking pictures inside didn't do the place much justice, so I only have one here to try to give you a sense. But there was a time in which EVERYTHING happened down here - cooking, sleeping, worshiping, even raising animals. They were literally living underground full-time, only going above ground to get fire wood. The tunnels were sometimes very narrow and I couldn't stand up fully in many of the rooms. But the whole place was fascinating.

A simple room in the underground city of Kaymaklı.

Next, we visited the pretty Ilhara Valley. We started in the pretty little village of Belisırma, where we ate lunch in the warm sun - another beautiful day - on the edge of a bubbling river. I had grilled fish and it was delicious. A horde of stray cats ate the bones for me.

Village of Belisırma in the Ilhara Valley.

Lunch on the river in the Ilhara Valley, village of Belisırma.

After lunch, we hiked through the valley forests. It was beautiful, and the valley offered some cool respite from the hot weather.

Beautiful hike through the Ilhara Valley.

Partway along the valley, we turned off to climb up the cliffs to visit another old church, named the Church of St. George. Again built as a cave directly into the wall, this church was rather open to the elements. And yet, the paintings were remarkably preserved. There was a disappointing amount of vandalism - whether ancient, such as the scratching out of eyes of holy figures (a common practices when invaders of a new religion come to area), or more modern sharpies writing so-and-so were here - but still the beauty and detail of the frescoes remains, and is, to me, rather incredible.

Cliffs of the Ilhara Valley.

Ilhara Valley

Beautiful, if vandalized, wall paintings in St. George Church, built into the cliffs of the Ilhara Valley.

An attempt to give you a sense of St. George Church, and its wall paintings.

After St. George Church, we returned to the valley, and we hiked longer, to a beautiful little tea shop on the river. It was a delightful afternoon. Ilhara Valley was our last stop, and so when we finally climbed out of the valley, we took a last look at the magnificent beauty of the region, before returning to our bus and heading home.

A final look back along the Ilhara Valley from the top of the cliffs.

Sorry again for the delay in this post - I'm hoping in the next while I can catch up a bit on some of my other interesting weekend trips!

A Day in the Life

I’m getting on close to a month in Turkey – a whole month! It’s (still) staggering to believe. Since I’m here studying, school and school commitments have been taking priority, especially in this period of starting classes and solidifying schedules and figuring out a basic level of language to get by day-to-day. This whole process has led to daily routine. Mundane, perhaps, but hey, there was no guarantee of entertainment when I started this blog.

My classes don’t start consistently at the same time, so my morning departure time can vary significantly. But no matter the time of day, my first stop out of the house is the Ulusoy bakery, a block away from the apartment, and only a couple hundred metres off the path to school. My order is always the same in the mornings: “Bir simit, lütfen”. One simit, please. A simit is one of my favourite Turkish foods – a thin, bagel-like circle, covered in sesame seeds. The best days, of course, are the ones where my timing lines up perfectly with a fresh batch and the inside is warm and steamy. The staff at Ulusoy are delightful – they know I’m a foreigner and so they speak slowly and clearly so I understand. If I’m with Yasin, they may ask him questions about how I’m adjusting. One woman regularly chats away to me when I come in and I just smile obliviously, and that seems to be just fine with her. As I become a regular, I am provided with one of the biggest motivators to improve my Turkish – I long for the day when our daily conversation can become more meaningful and go beyond a simple order of a simit.

Looking up my street. My building is the brown and yellow one, to the left of the pink one.

From the bakery, I cross Ziyabey Caddesi, the busiest street in Balgat. Like every street in Turkey, there are no crosswalks or lights for pedestrians, even though this is one of the most popular places to cross and is already an intersection. At least this is not really a busy road relative to the rest of the city. Only two lanes of traffic, and I can often take advantage of someone’s red light. And at least I can run. It makes me think about the systematic ableism in a city like Ankara – what about the elderly or those with disabilities who cannot so deftly dodge cars? I don’t know how they ever cross the street. Drivers have virtually no respect for any pedestrian, and I have yet to see additional compassion on their part for those who are less mobile.

I walk down a quieter side street, now, past the neighbourhood mosque. I love how it looks against a bright blue sky.

Beautiful neighbourhood mosque.

Next, I cross into Balgat Parki, or Balgat Park. I pass the Syrian beggars, quietly asking for money in Arabic. I pass the man who sells çay, scratch cards, and Kleenex. There were flowers in the park, too, even – amazingly – while it was snowing, but yesterday I noticed they were all dug up – I hope that means they’ll replant soon.

The sign for the park.

A mediocre picture of walking home through Balgat Park in the snow a couple weeks ago, in what was one of my favourite evenings in the city so far. The mosque pictured above is the one you can see just off to the left at the end of the park.

I emerge from the park behind two ugly, imposing government buildings: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Sayiştay, which I understand to be the government archives. Down the Sayiştay driveway, I reach the bustling highway which cuts through the city. Up the escalators I go – they do not work, nor have they ever, so it’s just a staircase – and across the overpass. More Syrian beggars, usually.

The overpass over the highway. Way down at the end, you can see some beggars. There is usually someone there.

On the other side, I descend, and then I have to run out to a partition where I wait to wave down a dolmuş. The dolmuşes are well labelled, I simply have to look for “ODTÜ” in the front window – that’s the Turkish acronym for METU, my university. In the mornings, the dolmuşes usually come every two to five minutes, so the wait isn’t long. I wave one down. It doesn’t quite come to a complete stop as I scramble inside.

What I see while I wait for the dolmus to show up.

Someone (not a native Turkish speaker, so the reliability is not guaranteed) told me that the word ‘dolmuş’ is derived from a word meaning ‘full’. If that’s true, it’s terribly accurate. Each dolmuş is privately owned, so it’s in the best interests of the driver to get as many passengers as he can before he makes a trip. Especially in the mornings, then, my ride is a cramped on to school. The dolmuşes all have seating, but it’s a hot commodity. I’ve never gotten a seat on the way to school. Instead, you just hold on and try not to knock over everyone else when you lunge around a corner or up a hill.

The most sought-after seat in the dolmuş is the front passenger seat. Sometimes, if I play my cards right on the way home, I can get the seat. This is ideal not just because it’s the most comfortable and roomy seat in the dolmuş, but for me personally it also (almost) guarantees I won’t miss my stop coming home, even if it’s dark out. The dolmuş costs 2.25 lira each way, and when you get on, you pass your money forward. I've learned how to say "one person" so the driver gives me change if I need it, but sometimes there's some confusion when people are passing money to me. Usually it's a straight-forward pass up to the person next closest to the driver, but if people say things other than how many people they're paying for, I lose my ability to pass the message along. Especially at the end of the day, when a whole ton of people are crammed inside and trying to pay, it can get a little hectic. I've had the driver yell at me at couple times, and I usually just look around bewildered (I am) until someone else can step and solve the crisis. But I'm certainly getting better, and here's more motivation to learn the language sooner rather than later.

On the way to school, it’s pretty easy to get off at the right spot, since the last stop is fairly central on campus, and if I am getting off somewhere before that, there are always others on the dolmuş getting of at the same place who will let the driver know. Otherwise, though, there are no “set” stops that the driver makes – he stops only if someone waves him down, or a passenger asks him to pull over. On the way home, this sometimes causes me trouble. I theoretically know what to say to get the driver to pull over, but I’m still incredibly self-conscious about yelling it out in a crowded dolmuş, when I know my accent is still really embarrassing. Compound that with the fact that I’m often coming home after dark, and standing in a crowd making it hard to see where we are out the windows, and it’s no surprise that the frequency with which I miss my stop is still rather high. No worries, though, since there is, without fail, always someone who wants to get off or on at a nearby metro station – it usually doubles my walk home, but that’s not so bad, and on nice days I’ve purposely stayed on the dolmuş a bit longer to enjoy the time outside.

At school, I’ve solidified my course sequence now (here’s hoping uOttawa approves the courses and lets me graduate!). I’m taking Current Issues in Central Asian Politics, Beginner Turkish Language, the US and Major Asian Powers, Turkey and the EU, and Experimental Psychology. It took a bit longer than I wanted to figure out the courses – I attended some classes where the professors bluntly told me that the course would be running in Turkish, not English (this despite, of course, the fact that they’ve all signed contracts to teach exclusively in English, and that English is listed as the SOLE language of instruction at the university. Oh well). But what I’ve been left with here is actually a nice, diverse semester, and it works out so I have both Wednesdays and Fridays off (before you jump on me for having a breeze semester, I’ll just say that my other three days are therefore ultra-busy, and one of my courses is Master’s level, so the workload is nice and heavy).

Campus (or perhaps Narnia) a week or so ago.

But now! Spring has sprung! Students flock to the grass to hang out. The white building is the President's building,

On weekends, Mustafa, Yasin and I usually eat breakfast together. We have the Turkish breakfast staples – cheeses, olives, hard boiled eggs, bread, and honey. As I mentioned last post, we take time on Saturday to go to the market to buy fresh fruit and vegetables. For dinners during the week, half the time I stay on campus and eat with friends, and half the time I come home and eat with my flatmates. I have much work to do to make up for all the cooking Mustafa does at dinners – he prepares delicious meals without fail. But he’s also been teaching me how to cook things “the Turkish way”, which I should put to use soon.

While I'm incredibly behind on stories I meant to tell on this blog, I'm also running out of time right now and I need to finish this post. So one quick story only!

Last weekend, my Slovenian friend's Turkish roommate, Ozge, invited us to a concert of Turkish pop sensation Mirkelam. Mirkelam was very popular in the early 2000s, especially noted for his 2004 hit Aşkımsın (and my favourite song of his). Now, his fan base is mostly the young-adult versions of the teen girls who fanned over him back in the day, but going to the concert was fantastic anyway. I find Turkish pop to be upbeat and fun, with a unique enough sound to differentiate itself from Top 40 pop back home. The concert venue was incredibly small, too, so we got to enjoy the music from close up. And afterwards, we slipped backstage because nobody seemed to care and got a photo with the star himself! You're jealous, I know it.

Mirkelam and band.

Ozge and I with Mirkelam.

I seriously have a list of stories to share, so I'm sorry that this post ended up only being a bland description of my day-to-day. This weekend I'm heading on a trip with the International Students Network to the famous region of Cappadoccia - it will be nice to leave the city finally, and I'm sure Cappadoccia is going to be absolutely stellar. My plan is to have an update post on the trip as soon as possible once I've returned!